


unbodiment

by Anonymous



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Ableism, Autobiography, Free Verse, Gen, Meta, Other, Poetry, Taking Hagakure's Bullshit Backstory Seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 04:50:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20303737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: An autobiographical poem about how I learned to love Hagakure Yasuhiro and, just maybe, myself.





	unbodiment

You are the unbodiment of me and I adore you.

1.  
Hagakure Yasuhiro is not real  
But I know him as I know myself  
Like I was ripped in two and from my broken bones, he rose,  
Dripping with opaque magenta,  
My flesh caked to his limbs.  
And he turned, and beamed at the hollow shell I've become, and said:  
"Don't worry.  
I'm useless too, right?"  
(And here he stops, and grins wider, white teeth gleaming in morning light)  
"So don't worry, dude.  
I survived.  
You'll survive too."

2.  
Hagakure has always been alone.  
That is the core truth of his character; beneath the smiles, Hagakure is  
Lonely  
Lonely  
Lonely.  
His mother had him at thirteen.  
His father burned their house down.  
His grandmother had a bunny-eared TV.  
He likes Dragonball; he grew up watching it, static and all, the cathode tubes buzzing when he sat too close.  
I grew up watching him.

3.  
I was thirteen when I discovered Dangan Ronpa, the old Oren Roren LP  
I read it all in one sitting, and I fell in love  
With a world of bright and brilliant characters that shone like me  
That for once, there were people like me,  
Lonely kids too talented for their own good.  
Lonely kids who couldn't socialize.  
Lonely kids with deep passions.  
Lonely kids with obsessions, special interests.  
Lonely kids who made friends  
And then died alone.  
Lonely kids.  
And I loved them,  
Because I was lonely,  
Because they were like me.

I loved them all,  
Except for fucking Hagakure.  
But no one likes Hagakure, right?  
The words on the tip of every tongue:  
"Why couldn't he have died instead?"

4.  
Somehow, Hagakure is noticed.  
Somehow, rumors swirl about this boy  
(So different, so weird, so wrong)  
This boy who knows things he shouldn't  
Who knows things no one should  
Who can predict election results and freak accidents and tomorrow's weather  
(Not even the meteorologists get that one right)  
Who can let you in on his secrets, for the right price.

For the boy with no friends  
It's addicting  
He gets clients now, and they're just like  
Friends, if you don't look too close  
And he never does.

He probably should.

5.  
I drifted out of the fandom  
We didn't even have full translations of SDR2, back then  
(God, was that seven years ago?)  
And I've never cared for the second game as much as the first.

Time ticks on, relentlessly.

NDRV3, DR3, and me  
Return home simultaneously  
My chest hurts  
I can't stop thinking about DR  
Heart fluttering  
So pure  
I can barely believe I'm allowed near  
Something so good it shouldn't exist  
I'm almost scared to go approach  
Can you die of pure joy?  
Do other people feel this way?

I think I'm in love

6.  
He is on the run.

Dirt  
Mud  
Self-loathing  
These are things you eat  
When you live on the street

When you have  
Nothing  
Is easy

He changes schools  
He changes schools  
He turns twenty  
He changes schools

The Kuzuryuus always find him.

(He still can't stop buying shit online.  
He still can't sell his flooding collections.  
He still doesn't think that counts as an addiction.)

Loneliness is the greatest despair.

6.  
I get furious when people insult Hagakure and I don't understand why.  
I don't like him. I've never liked him. No one likes Hagakure.  
And yet, seeing him insulted sets me into a boiling anger.  
It makes me so mad that I feel physically ill.  
I don't care this much about characters I like.

Let's Play after Let's Play devolve  
Into insults and garbage.  
"Is he brain damaged?"  
One angrily spits,  
The kind of person who'd never insult the disabled,  
But certainly would insult the annoying.  
One of my favorite fic authors puts out two essays  
One suggesting Ishimaru is autistic  
One suggesting  
Hagakure should have died  
To make room for Ishimaru among the survivors  
(What, because Ishimaru's autism is pretty and Hagakure's is not?)

It makes me feel physically ill  
Why do I care this much about a character I don't like?

7.  
Hope's Peak has a rooftop garden  
Hagakure likes it there

He still can't believe this is real;  
That for once, there were people like him.  
He's never had friends before.  
Now he's surrounded by them.

The chicken in his lap shifts  
Her feathers ruffle and relax  
He pets her gently

He's not a real person, not really  
But here  
He could learn to be one, right?

8.  
I go back to DR1  
Return to my roots  
Searching for answers  
And I realize that Hagakure is beautiful.  
That my heart is beginning to flutter for him,  
Same as it flutters for the franchise itself.

He's scared  
And petty  
And hurt  
And tired.  
He's funny, mostly on purpose.  
He's small-minded,  
And small on the inside.  
He craves attention, and if all he can get is negative attention -- that's good enough.  
He doesn't really have anything else to live for, right?  
He tries.  
He tries so hard to be good.  
He isn't, though.  
He is all too familiar  
Too much like me  
And perhaps that is why I hated him, once.

He is disabled  
I don't think there's a way to dodge that  
Neurotypicals just don't act like that

He is disabled  
Obviously but ambiguously  
(Autism? Anxiety? Brain damage? All of the above?).

He is disabled  
And he is allowed to survive  
Without being useful

I can't think of another character who gets that dignity  
Because we don't let people get away with that--  
Value comes from ability, right?  
From helping others  
From group cohesion  
From empathy in the technical sense  
And if you can't contribute  
You don't deserve to live  
That's the way things are  
Despairing, isn't it?

"You must not lose hope!"

Though he has no right to  
Though it disgusts us all  
Hagakure clings to life  
It's ugly and it's painful and it's raw  
It's brave and cowardly in equal measure  
His withdrawal disease  
And everyone is waiting for him to sink  
But he won't  
He is entirely unkillable

He can keep moving forward.

Hagakure has survived 20 years  
Maybe now, he will learn to live.

9.  
An embodiment  
Is a concept  
That has taken on a body.

An unbodiment, then  
Is a body  
Becoming the concepts that build it.

10.  
Listen, darling, because I can see your future:

Picture, if you will, in your mind's eye,  
Your beloved high school,  
Restored to the glory it claimed to have.  
And you are there, in every timeline.  
When spring comes and the trees burst into bloom,  
That's where you'll be.

Sometimes, all your friends are by your side;  
Sometimes, only six students survive.  
Sometimes, your sweaty hands cling to  
Someone special:  
(A man average in all but luck, a red-haired boy with a smile like the sun, a blonde woman grieving the love she lost).  
Sometimes, you're all alone.

But you're still loved,  
And love in return,  
And that golden thread has woven into your flesh and made you unkillable.  
You'll never be whole, but you'll never die.  
Through the cherry tree branches, overflowing with white,  
You squint up at the sun, and  
Something blossoms in your chest.  
An unfamiliar feeling --

Baby,  
Someday  
You will be happy.


End file.
